Seventeen - Was There?

"'Was there?' said Bill" (p. 208). That's right, Bill good buddy, a fellow died. I find this interesting. A person gets gored in the street, and, except for a single waiter, nobody really seems to care. The festival goes on, and everyone gets really really hammered, just like they did yesterday. It seems quite similar to Cohn, actually. He suffers a severe mental breakdown and probably goes slightly insane, and the general response from most of his so-called friends is essentially "don't let the door hit ya on your way out." I declare this to be an analogy. Crowd is to dead guy as Friends are to Cohn. woo. Next up we have Brett, destroyer of men. Is that an epithet? hoo hoo, look at me go. Anyway, it appears that every man that Brett comes into contact with suffers emasculation, depression, night sweats, uncontrollable laughing, and indigestion. Those last three were made up. However, there is a bit of a recurring theme here that every guy that chases after Brett just ends up worse off than when they started. Jake abandons his values in order to chase that tail, Cohn punches out his friends, Mike becomes a straight up jerk (although that probably would have happened either way), and eventually Romero will probably burst into flames. Poor chap. At least, his livelihood will go down the tubes. Anyway, we gain some handy insight into why Brett lives her life how she does. Frankly, Hemingway, I think it's a little late in the game to be throwing out character development. Try to get that done on the other side of the climax next time, kaythx. Oh that reminds me, I've decided that Cohn's hissy fit is the climax of this tale. Don't worry, I have reasoning. This whole novel, people have been ripping on Cohn. Even as a young lad, I'm sure the boys at Princeton called him "Connie" and ran his skivvies up the flag pole. So we've got this sense of building tension all the way up through the novel. However! because of Cohn's gentlemanly and old-fashioned chivalrous nature, he just takes it, over and over. So there's this building tension, and therefore sort of rising action that seems to push the plot along. And then BOOM chapter 17, he just snaps and beats Jake straight into unconsciousness. He gets pushed over the edge, and the climax happens. However, his brutal pwnage of Jake doesn't just serve as a plot device. It's also symbolic of the fall of his old-school morals. A gentleman does not just cave his buddy's face in. By showing Cohn abandon his values for violence, Hemingway is showing the shift from the old prewar morals and values of gentlemanlinessicity for getting drunk and having fights. This is the way of the Lost Generation, he is saying. Cohn's way is outdated. He recognizes this, and tries to salvage it with a handshake, but ultimately, the Lost Generation just ends up laughing at this pathetic attempt to salvage his honor.

These are boxers up a flagpole. "Connie" is inscribed on the wasteband. Kids can be so cruel.